CANTANDO BREAKS THRU WITH FIRST CAREER WIN!
COMPARATO 2ND; JONES ON PODIUM FOR FIRST TIME SINCE '98 ABU DHABI!!

POZNAN, POLAND: Italy has a new hero tonight as young Francesco Cantando in the Singha Beer/Waircom DAC/Mercury 2.5 won his first career victory, cruising to a 12 second win at the U.I.M. F1 World Championship for powerboats at the 1st Annual Grand Prix of Poland here in Malta Lake.

Cantando, who has shown brilliance in his 4 year career by taking the podium a number of times including 3 times this season, led from the start, passing the pole sitter, American Scott Gillman, and holding off the lead driver of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi/Adnoc Lubes DAC/Mercury 2.5 litre boat by as much as 9 seconds and as little as 3.5 seconds before Gillman dropping out with 5 laps to going finishing 7th on the day.

For Cantando, he set the pace for much of the race, running well through traffic and lapping the field including another young Italian Fabio Comparato in the Laserline/Castrol DAC/Mercury 2.5 litre boat.Comparato cruised to 2nd, holding off a charging Jonathan Jones at the finish and picking up 15 more points now closing on his hospitalized teammate, Guido Cappellini who missed the race because of crashing in practice with 80 points. Comparato now has 78 points having finished every race this season, while Gillman's dropping out didn't leave him without points picking up 4 more and moving closer to Cappellini with 74.

For the 4-time World Champion, it was a welcome return to the podium for Jones and the Fuchs/Eurobet Burgess/OMC 3.0 litre machine. His detuned powerplant was not as quick as it was in Riga when it led the race, but it has found reliability and now Jones can look forward to cashing in on more points in the 2nd half of the season.

Hungarian Rudy Mihaldinecz in his Waircom/Dunaferr Seebold/Mercury 2.5 litre boat ran a strong race moving up from 7th and finishing for the 3rd straight race and his best result in 4th place for the season. Portugeese pilot Duarte Benavente in the Singha Beer Burgess/Mercury 2.5 litre boat was running in the top 6 for most of the day and finished 5th despite a broken blade on his propeller late in the race that almost forced him to retire on the final lap.

Italian veteran Franco Leidi in his Waircom/T-net CSM Elmore DAC/Mercury 2.5 litre machine moved up to a 6th place finish, while the Latvian licensed Russian pilot Victor Kunitch strugged to finish 8th despite spending 5 laps in the pits before retuning before the half way point.

Rounding out the finishers was Brasilian rookie Paul Gaiser in his Petrobras OMC/Mercury 2.0 litre machine finishing another race and gaining 2 more points in the championship.

Seven pilots failed to either start of finish, with Italian returnee Cipriano Lambri failling to finish his first race of 2000 going 41 laps before retiring late. Rookie Laith Pharon of Saudi Arabia who started off in trouble and charged back from a strong 4th starting spot on the start pontoon before having his Hyatt OMC/Mercury 2.5 litre almost sink 39 laps into the event.

Another strong performance came from 26 year old pilot Awad Al Qubaisi of Abu Dhabi on the Adnoc Lubes/National Bank of Abu Dhabi OMC/Mercury 2.5 litre power machine, running up into the top 5 before having engine problems 24 laps into the event. Italian veteran Massimo Roggiero, quickest in morning warm-up, came roaring into 4th place from his 8th starting spot and remained there before running into trouble and quitting the event on the 19th lap. Another dissapointing result from the hard charging pilot looking for another F1 victory.

Beside Cappellini failing to start, Argentinian pilot Carlos Maidana didn't start after running into a myriad of problems prior to the start of the event but will be ready from a strong performance in the series next round in Bulgaria in 2 weeks time.

So Plovdiv, Bulgaria is next on the calander for Round #8 of the U.I.M. F1 World Championship as F1 powerboating comes to this majestic land for the first time and with Cappellini ready to return to the fight, 3 pilots just 6 points seperating the World Championship lead, the year is only getting better for a fight right to the year's ending event in Abu Dhabi in November.